No: 12 Section 37.1

The Equal Status and Employment Equality laws that were brought in the late 1990’s early ’00s positioned Ireland at the time as a leader internationally in terms of LGB equality and equality in general; equality in relation to trans people still had/has a journey to go.

The new laws finally meant that lesbian, gay and bisexual people could feel that they had a right to be treated fairly, whether that be in booking a room in a hotel, having a pint, or coming out at work. That’s of course if you weren’t a teacher, doctor or nurse working in the predominantly Church dominated education and health services.

For these employees a clause in the Employment Equality legislation, known as Section 37.1, meant that a school, for example, could claim that hiring a gay teacher would undermine the schools religious ethos. The clause specifically permitted such discrimination, and given the fact that the vast majority of primary schools and a majority of second level schools are Church-owned and managed, placed gay, lesbian and bisexual teachers in an even more vulnerable position than before the new laws were brought in.

I did research for my masters around this time exploring what being a teacher in an Irish second level school was like for lesbian and gay teachers, motivated by my own experience as a young lesbian teacher at second level; I interviewed teachers from Catholic schools and from ETB schools, all boys, all girls and co-ed schools, rural and urban schools. The experience was the same for all these teachers; none of them, not even the teachers in the ETB sector, felt safe to come out, or be out about their LGB identity. Many of them talked about having to be ‘super teachers’, i.e., to make themselves so indispensable to their ‘straight’ counterparts that even if their sexual orientation became known, the prospect of them being sacked might be balanced with the loss that would be suffered by the school in terms of all the extra stuff they were doing. Section 37.1 became synonymous with the continued subordination of Ireland’s LGBT teachers and campaigns began for its removal along with its ‘chilling effect’ in Irish schools that served to silence thousands of teachers.

Having been established in 2004, the INTO LGBT group led the way with a milestone national conference held in Kildare Street. I still remember how powerful it was to have real live lesbian and gay teachers stand up, come out and call for fair treatment for themselves and their colleagues. The campaign to have section

37.1 removed went on for a number of years with a few pivotal moments that built momentum and grew hope in Ireland’s LGBT teachers and medical professionals (who also felt the chilling effect of Section 37.1 in church-managed hospitals).

Then Senator Averil Power introduced a Bill in 2012 to the upper house; the Bill didn’t progress, as is frequently the plight of many opposition Bills; but the debate that it allowed was powerfully moving and supportive of positive change.

Section 37.1 was finally amended in the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act in 2015, introduced by Aodhan O’Riordan in the then Labour/FG government.

The Constitution binds our laws closely to privileging religious affiliation to this day, we see this day in day out in relation to our schools; the amendment wasn’t able to change that and so didn’t go far enough for many people. But, the net effect for LGBT teachers was enormous and immediate relief; they could now get on with their jobs without fearing for their jobs or their prospects within employment. Recognising this positive impact and having campaigned for a long number of years to affirm the principle that every employee should enjoy equal protections, GLEN welcomed the amendment as a step closer to that principle.

There’s still a job of work to be done in terms of rebalancing the place of religion in our constitution, but we’re getting there one law at a time.

Sandra Irwin-Gowran worked as Director of Education with GLEN from 2006 to 2016